Series Synopsis

"DOM AND JOHN” is a situation comedy following the lives and adventures of two twenty-somethings as they move to London to start new jobs. Dom and John's very different worlds collide when they move into rented rooms in a large house in South East London. Dom is an unassuming, slightly reserved tennis coach from Cornwall and John is a talkative and accident-prone civil servant who has moved down from the midlands on a promotion.

Dom and John share the house with builder, Steve, their bluff, larger-than-life landlord. At first, it seems that Dom and John don't have a lot in common, but they soon find out there’s more that unites than divides them as they adapt to life in the house.

Episode synopsis
Episode 1 – “Meet and greet”

Tennis coach Dom fancies a move to London; civil servant John's got no choice as they've moved his office. The pair are now on collision course after finding rooms in the same south London house. Landlord Steve takes Dom and his mum, Cathy, for a tour of the house. Dom takes a shine to the house while Cathy takes a shine to Steve. Meanwhile, John is lost and late for his viewing. His relief at finding the place is marred by the discovery that Dom has nabbed the big room - but the supercar in the drive, the cinema room and humungous kitchen are more than enough to compensate.

Director Statement

Co-writer, Tom and I got the idea to write this when reminiscing about our time as housemates in London in the early noughties. We’ll leave you to decide which bits are true! I live in Kent now and this is where we’ve filmed it.

We’re both big fans of cringe comedy and I suppose that comes through in the writing. Whilst we do have our influences we also wanted to create something that was uniquely us and hadn’t been tried before. Cheerful but low key was the way we wanted to go with it. Because it isn’t a gag-heavy show, it’s as much a comedy drama as a sitcom. Whilst basing it in a house is hardly original, to my mind, it’s the only formula that enables the viewer to really get to know the characters.

Making it realistic was important to us - we wanted break with sitcom convention a bit and show that life’s still funny even when people don’t have much to say. A lot of the jokes are visual rather than spoken - on some strange level that I’m still trying to get my own head round, it’s slapstick without the falling down.

We’d like to say a big thank you to the actors who gave to their time for free to work on this project and believing in it, and Colin O’Reilly for his infinite patience and amazing camera work. The small budget shows with the sound, particularly the wind interference in the external scenes - it was done on a shotgun mic and without the benefit of sound mixing. We’re gambling that the bits that went better will hopefully make up for this!

We’ve written six episodes and hope this DIY pilot will be the proof of concept we need to get the rest made.